Travis County Commissioners Court
August 15, 2006
Item 11
11. Consider and take appropriate action regarding report on status of county central collections.
>> I think each of you have received the August 8th short update on central collections. I did want to bring several people with me today, dusty knight from the tax office, travis gatlin from p.b.o. And deanna ramirez from p.b.o. First of all I would like to say that -- that we have had excellent cooperation and worked with the district judges, the county court at law judges, all of the j.p.'s, cscd, auditor's office, its and -- and an extreme work effort out of the tax department. Including nelda's staff, dusty, renee, israel. We could have not been able to pull this together without everybody's help and -- and I think that it's -- it's progressing extremely well. As a -- as the memo points out, the central collections start out in April and these are -- these are total numbers. This is actually the money coming in. Some of that is the take it's money, some -- some of that is the state's money, some of it is the county money. We have not been reconciled yet to the effect of central collections on the j.p. Receipts because there may be some shifting going on there. So -- but in April, they collected 19,534. And in July, they collected $76,083. I would like dusty maybe to -- to -- to mention anything that he would like on those collection numbers. No? The trend is -- it's trending deanna. We had done some projections on central collections, anything -- any comments from your --
>> the numbers of -- are matching the trends that we were -- that we were -- we had set up based on an increase in caseload. We are hoping that the numbers look like they are going to meet the goal that we had of a million. Over 12 --
>> one of the things that -- that during our discussions of central collections was to have the third party vendor, the old accounts in place by October 1. What has happened that is we actually do not have the financial system currently in place. To currently try to for those collections if we went out for a new third party vendor. My recommendation is that we delay the overall contract until a January 31st time frame. As you will recall all of the j.p.'s are currently scheduled in the January time frame to come up on facts. And we would like to have a system in place where we can account for those partial payments coming in. It may be in the interim, in the fall, that we will be able to utilitylize a hamer system, there's currently programming going on that you funded in order to do two things ... The first being an electronic down load from the j.p.'s system, accounting system, where we could transfer older cases to the hamer system, electronically. Currently, there are temporaries, including those manually. I think that you have a few that you are still inputting, right?
>> we have more than enough to be data entered.
>> the most cost effective way would be to -- to be able to electronically flag in the j.p. System and then it automatically goes into the hamer system. That's one of them, the other program that's currently happening is the -- is the gasb 34 programming that -- the requirements meeting the auditor's requirement for gasb 34 reporting for cases that have partial payments already. In other words, if somebody took some driver training and got a partial credit, then -- then we need a program that when we feed those into the central collections, that -- that dusty and his staff are not having to manually calculate the gasb 34. I think that we are within a time frame in the next probably six weeks of having both of those. In place. So -- so what we are asking, there are a couple of things on this agenda item. I wanted to brief the court and tell you that -- that my projections, with deanna's help, are that we over a period of -- of 12 months, that we would collect about a million dollars and that was gross dollars. And I think we are on -- on a trend to do that. We will find out what dilution in the j.p.'s that central collections is having. I might mention to you that -- that dusty indicated to me the other day that they had actually sent out an old case of 1990, the fella come in and paid it. So -- so, you know, all of these extremely old faces are not dead cases. I think there's serious money in them. What we are asking today is two things. I would like for the court to give us January 31st to have a third party vendor in place, obviously we are going to be working real hard in October and November and December, getting that r.f.p. Out on the street, getting a draft to the court, and having the study group work on that. And the second request would be to extend the current third party collector that's the pilot program in j.p. 3, judge goodwin has requested that we extend the contract until we get that will cover all of the j.p.'s. She is okay with the extending it for an additional year. My recommendation in this report would be extended through January 31st. Let's see if we can't do a consolidation at this point. That's -- those are the two recommendations that I'm asking court action on.
>> holding off on the other j.p.'s class would be state requirement.
>> no.
>> we wanted to delay, but in order for us to finally act on a request for proposals or qualifications, takes two to three months, so woe need to have the r.f.p. On the street probably October or so.
>> it's probably realistically looking at November.
>> November 1?
>> early November?
>> I would say in November, because we want to make sure that the specifications, the system, that we are asking them to feed into, that we have defined that system on our side. That's what we are basically has caused some of the holdup. Frts.
>> if you -- if we get to issue the r.f.p. Late November, we will not have a -- have a generally [indiscernible] selected in January.
>> I would say that we would shoot for November the 15th to have the r.f.p. On the street or before.
>> move approval of recommendation with the time liable specified. Time line specified. Any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> could I get a clarification on budget amendments and transfers. I know that you discussed them under the consent. They didn't appear on the screen. Did you intend to approve them in the consent motion?
>> yes, sir.
>> yes.
>> okay.
>> christie here on 10?
>> I wasn't -- until the xerox machines jammed, if you could delay this until after 11:00, we will have a copy for you then.
>> wave when it's ready, we will call it up.
>> thank you.
>> okay.
>> judge, on 21 I was hopeful that we were going to be able to get this resolved pretty quickly. We are going to need two more weeks. There's problems with the contract. It may involve a change back with Pflugerville and --
>> [multiple voices] [inaudible - no mic]
>> it's hard to think.
>> services they are wanting them to start. But --
>> let's do one week, if it's not ready we will take another week.
>> that would be great. Thank you.
>> it's not a quick fix.
>> and next week is the 22nd.
>> thank you, judge.
>> apologize for that.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, August 16, 2006 12:08 PM